We’re going to find a garden enclosed in cool, moss-covered stone walls. We’ll lay out delicate china on a wrought-iron table with ivy growing up each leg. Arrayed in sweet sundresses and sandals, we’ll carry in platefuls of hot buttered scones, pitchers of raspberry and strawberry lemonade, and pots of fragrant orange tea. Every sip will be accompanied by a staunch pinky point. Twilight will find us still laughing, unwilling to let the summer daylight slip away.

Oh, and of course there’ll be petit fours. The dainty, sweet little cake squares will be the jewels of the tea table.

What a fantasy. In actuality, I’ve just finished my first week of teacher meetings. The past few days have been filled with book shelving, furniture moving, copy making, curriculum planning, sweet student meeting, and lots of teacher giggling. I’ve left with a headache nearly every day, relieved that headache with a nap nearly every day, and even still . . . gotten a ton of work done nearly every day!

We can still have petit fours, though, right? Petit fours are sweet little tea time desserts that seem to specialize in being adorable. Any number of miniature desserts can be classified as petit fours (literally “small ovens” in French), but for my sister’s surprise garden party earlier this summer, I knew I wanted dense, fruity cake squares. Petit fours are sometimes filled with jams, and then are covered in poured fondant or chocolate.

Now, before I gush, these bite-sized cakes were not perfect. More specifically, the poured fondant was not perfect. In fact, instead of “poured,” let’s call it glopped fondant. Shall we?

The thing is, fondant is going to be super sweet. There’s a cavity-inducing amount of confectioner’s sugar in it, not to mention the corn syrup. The only hope of this stuff covering your petit fours and not ending up with a cloying mess is making sure the poured fondant is heated enough to be very thin, so only a thin layer sticks to the outside of the cake square. This proved to be impossible with the recipe I used. It was warmed in a double boiler for gentle heating, but as soon as I started to pour, I was only able to cover a couple of cake squares before it was glop. Even when it was fully heated, it never really got thin enough to cover the squares in a reasonable way. As a result, they were too sweet.

Oh, and that color? That was not the color I was going for. I had a pale, rose petal pink in mind. Um, that’s all I’ll say about that.

While the petit fours weren’t perfect, the taste itself (beyond the fondant) was so wonderful. The cake was deliciously moist, cool, and dense with a gorgeous buttery almond flavor. The raspberry jam covering was the perfect complement to the almond (one of my favorite flavor combinations!) and was simple to brush on, though it never dried completely. Really, if you use poured white chocolate or a different poured fondant recipe (how about trying this one, which looks great?), these would be fantastic (and they’d probably look a little less “gloppy” as well). Even in their overly sweet state, I ate a ton of them due to their brilliant flavorings.

This is also one of those recipes that ends up looking fancy despite being relatively easy to make — and you know I love those. A few key steps (like freezing the cake before cutting it up and making sure your fruit glaze is very thin) ensure that the process is relatively simple.

NOTE: This recipe does not include the poured fondant recipe or instructions due to the aforementioned difficulties. If you want to try poured fondant, I’d recommend looking at this post on Cakes and Cupboards, which looks promising. Nevertheless, poured fondant might still be too sweet for you. Another option is a poured chocolate. You’ll probably need two coats if you use white chocolate. If you want completely smooth petit fours, I recommend using a thin layer of rolled marzipan under your icing, or the buttercream procedure outlined on Cakes and Cupboards, above.

Cream butter, shortening, and sugar together in a large bowl. Beat in vanilla and almond extracts. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk. In another bowl, beat egg whites to soft peaks. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool in pan for 10 minutes. Turn cake out onto a cooling rack. When cooled, chill cake in refrigerator for a bit before freezing it for at least 1 hour.

Right before removing the cake from the freezer, prepare fruit glaze. In a medium saucepan, heat preserves with the 3 tablespoons water on low heat. If using jelly, judge whether or not you need any of the water to make it a thin consistency.

Remove cake from freezer. Using a long, serrated knife, cut a thin slice off each side of chilled cake. Cut cake into squares of desired size (for me, about 1.5-inch squares). Place squares 1/2 inch apart on a cooling rack over a sheet pan. Use a pastry brush to spread a thin layer of heated preserves over tops and sides of petit fours before icing. Allow excess to drip off. Let dry (I put them in the fridge and let them set up a bit — they never really “dry”). Repeat if necessary to thoroughly coat squares.

Prepare your desired poured fondant or chocolate and pour over the petit fours. Decorate the tops with different frostings, chocolates, sprinkles, candy, sugar flowers, etc. as you wish. Refrigerate until ready to eat — eat within a day or two.

Julie

AWH! They’re so pretty! Good job! Thanks for sharing the recipe. I’d love to share this to my friends as well in Foodista I hope you don’t mind. Just add the foodista widget for petit fours at the end of this post, and that should do it! The widget shall direct readers to this post when they go looking for a petit four recipe 🙂 Keep on sharing!

I have to admit, fondant kind of scares me. I mean, I really want to learn how to use it. But I’ve heard such horror stories about it’s taste that I’m kind of scared of it. I’m sorry it didn’t turn out exactly the way you’d planned!

The little cake squares themselves do sound delicious. Almost like a linzer tart of cake! And who can resist such a thing?

Julie

August 29, 2010 at 2:33 pm (10 years ago)

This is a “baby step” into fondant, I think. Too bad my “baby step” resulted in me falling right over 😉

I’m not big into fondant because when I think of my priorities, cooking outweighs decorating (though I love both). So I don’t know that I’ll ever get into, say, fondant covered cakes. They’re beautiful, but not my talent!

I loved the picture you painted of the garden party!! What a wonderful image that was!! I think you are so brave to venture into fondant, it intimidates me beyond belief. The pictures turned out wonderfully well and despite not being quite the color you wanted I still think that is a fabulous color!!! I would have helped you eat several too!!

Julie

Thank you! You have inspired me to do petit fours with fairies on them for my Neverland Pixie Hollow Cake for Sophia’s 4th birthday. I didn’t even think of that until I saw this post. BTW I think they look beautiful even if they are a little less than perfect. Great job! I will try the other recipe you suggest though 😉

Julie

August 29, 2010 at 2:35 pm (10 years ago)

Hurray! They are just perfect for that cute little princess 😉

This cake recipe is phenomenal, but yes, do use a different glaze! I actually think they’d be 10x easier and prettier with just a simple white chocolate glaze. Melted chocolate or candy melts are also a super easy way to pipe little decorations — just stick the melted chocolate in a ziplock, cut off a tiny corner, and pipe away!

Despite what you might say, I think they’re sweet! I love the pink and purple- they’re so “girly tea partyish.” When I was small, I used to love watching my uncle in his bakery make petit fours. I always dreamed of tea parties like yours, but my cousins were boys and they’d have nothing to do with the idea. A girl can dream, can’t she? I hope you have a fabulous school year!

Julie

Oh I don’t know, they look pretty darn good to me! I mean, did you see my leaning tower of pisa fours? Yours are straight and the icing is smooth and Alex, my four year old, would leave his brother in the gutter for a pink treat like that! (Pink’s his very favorite color; we’re way too into pinkalicious over here right now.)

Julie

There’s nothing about these that looks like you made any mistakes to me! 🙂 They look adorable and I like the shade of pink they turned out! You’ll be proud to know that I tried my hand at baking this weekend, and well…let’s just say if you do another “flops” post, I’ll be happy to contribute some pics! :/ I’ll have to tell you all about it soon! Hope school preps are going well and those headaches go away!

Julie

Meredith

April 5, 2011 at 5:42 pm (9 years ago)

The spring weather makes a tea party sound absolutely divine right now! Your opening description is dreamy. I’m currently abroad, but I can’t wait to try all sorts of recipes once I’m back in a “real” kitchen again – at home in Charlotte, as a matter of fact!